Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
The screen is filled with an extreme close-up of Susie Hutchinson frowning into the camera.
“Coming!” she says, backing away to reveal the interior of her cottage. She’s dressed in a thin cotton nightgown with, judging from the way it clings to her body, nothing underneath.
The camcorder sits a few feet off the floor, most likely in a chair and hidden beneath what I assume is a blanket.
A dark blur surrounds the frame, obscuring a third of it.
The camera has been angled toward the bed and a sliver of nightstand, on which sits a lit hurricane lamp.
Other lamps and candles have been lit as well, sitting just out of frame, only their flickering glow visible on the walls.
Off-screen, Susie says, “Hey, you.”
All of us watch the scene unfold from the parlor of the main house, where we sit clustered around the camcorder on the table.
For Ronan, Heather, and Julianne, it’s their first time seeing it.
Only Violet and I know what’s coming next—Ronan, also off-screen, his voice emanating from Susie’s doorway.
The reverse angle of what I witnessed last night.
“You needed to talk to me about something?”
“I do,” Susie says. “Come on in.”
She reappears, now trailed by Ronan. I look from the recorded version of him to the live one seated beside me.
“Did you know she was recording this?”
Ronan goes pale. “No.”
On-screen, he stands motionless as Susie perches on the edge of the bed.
“So what’s this all about, Susie?”
“I’ve been going over the script,” she says, reaching for her vape. “I hope you don’t mind, but I have some notes.”
What follows is a combination of what I assumed last night—that Susie was trying to get my part through seduction—and what Ronan described about becoming uncomfortable, ending the conversation, and leaving.
At the point in the video when Susie spreads out on the bed and invites him to join her, the live version of Ronan gulps and says, “Why was she secretly recording this?”
“You tell us,” Heather says. “Maybe she wanted evidence just in case something happened while you two were alone.”
“Nothing would have happened,” Ronan says, daring a glance my way. “Susie’s not my type.”
On-screen, Susie says, “Just because we’re stuck on an island doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun. I won’t tell anyone.” Her voice lowers to a purr. “We can film it, if you want. Something to remember me by. You ever do that before?”
Both versions of Ronan, on-screen and off-, flinch. Real-life Ronan says nothing. Recorded Ronan turns and walks out of frame, leaving Susie alone and pouting on the bed. There’s the sound of the door opening, followed by a weighted pause.
“I’m going to forget this happened,” Ronan says. “But, Susie, I’m serious, if you ever fucking try this again, consider your no-talent ass fired.”
Still on the bed, Susie lets out a frustrated groan as the door slams shut. After a few seconds of staring at the ceiling, she slides out of bed and approaches the camcorder, her expression oddly calm. She reaches out, her hand filling the frame before everything goes black.
In the parlor, Ronan pushes away from the table and stands. “I told you,” he says, talking to all of us but looking only at me. “I told you nothing happened.”
I don’t know what to say. Sorry seems so inadequate. No, I didn’t accuse Ronan of doing something to Susie. Yet that doesn’t keep me from feeling both shitty and sad. All the trust the two of us had built up in the past few days is now gone, and unlikely to return.
“That still doesn’t explain why Susie’s camcorder was in the woods,” Julianne says. “You said you found it on the altar, right?”
“It’s a rock,” Heather clarifies.
“It says ‘altar’ in the script.”
“Which isn’t the same as real life.”
In Daisy’s diary, it’s Ruth Hume Semple who refers to it as an altar, while admitting that’s merely a guess. And while I agree with Heather that it’s likely just a big rock, I also experienced its weirdness firsthand.
“Whatever you want to call it, that camcorder was found there,” Julianne says, pointing to the camera now on the table. Only Violet remains seated in front of it, staring at the black screen like a woman hypnotized. “So either Susie put it there or someone else took it from her cottage.”
Heather levels her gaze at Ronan. “You were the only one who possibly could have known about it.”
“I swear to you, I had no idea I was being recorded,” Ronan says.
I think about the advice Violet gave me yesterday about always knowing where the camera is placed.
Note its location on the first take. After that, pretend it’s not there.
What we just watched was clearly a single-take affair.
If Ronan was aware of the camcorder’s presence, he did an amazing job of pretending he wasn’t.
At the table, Violet fiddles with one of the camcorder’s buttons. She gasps as the screen again blinks to life.
“I think there’s another video,” she says.
We all crowd around her, eyes on the screen, which for a moment shows nothing but swirling darkness that could be sky, could be earth.
The tip of a sneaker pops into the bottom of the frame, its brief appearance clarifying things.
We’re on the move, someone holding the camcorder tilted toward the ground.
The camera steadies, giving us a view of trees straight ahead, their trunks pale and eerie in the moonlight.
We’re in the woods, still moving, ducking low-hanging branches.
Suddenly everything blurs as the camera does a half spin, stopping on a low angle of Susie herself.
At some point, she’d changed from her nightgown into her island costume.
The same blouse and, I assume, skirt that now hang in the oak.
She films herself from the most unflattering angle. A view straight up her nostrils. Like that famous shot from The Blair Witch Project, only with less snot. The fear, though, is the same.
“Okay, so I’m pretty sure I saw something pass outside my cottage,” she says, her voice a tremulous wisp. “I came out here to follow it and now—” She lets out a single, scared whimper. “Now I think I’m lost.”
There’s another dizzying half spin as she points the camcorder back toward the woods. Bugs drift across the frame like dust particles. One lands on the lens, monstrously huge, before Susie swats it away.
“I’m so confused. I don’t know if I came this way”—the camera lurches to the left—“or that way.”
Now there’s a move to the right, after which the camcorder remains completely still. At first, I think the picture has frozen. But then I notice the bugs, still zipping past the lens. Which means it’s Susie who was frozen when this was being recorded.
“There’s something out here,” she whispers. “I can hear it.”
We all lean forward, straining to hear what she does as the camera slowly pans across the woods. There’s nothing there. Just trees and bugs and a ground covered by dead leaves and undergrowth.
Then we hear it.
A single, suspicious crunch.
Like someone just took a step toward Susie.
She emits a terrified yelp and begins to run. With the camera jostling, everything becomes a disorienting blur. The forest floor passes in streaks. Tree trunks leap into frame. Low-hanging leaves slap the lens. All of it is underscored by the sound of Susie’s increasingly panicked breathing.
After another collision—a spindly branch this time, whipping the lens—the image settles enough to make out a circular clearing in the trees, moss carpeting the ground, and, in its center, a large flat rock.
It looks bigger on-screen than it did in real life.
Scarier, too. Bathed in moonlight, the rock practically glows.
A second later, it’s gone, the camcorder twisting toward the edge of the clearing. The trees forming the circle stand packed together, their branches intertwined. Like they’re joining forces, blocking Susie’s escape. The image judders as she yells into the darkness.
“Who’s there? What do you want?”
For a moment, nothing happens.
Nothing moves.
Not Susie.
Not the trees.
Absolutely nothing.
Then something bursts from the trees, into the clearing, rushing toward Susie. It’s impossible to tell what it is. Just a blur of movement, dark and fast on the very edge of the frame, bringing with it a half second of chaos.
The camera tilts.
Susie lets out a sliver of a scream before it’s cut off.
The image somersaults, like she’s dropped the camera. A sickening tumble of sky, rock, and trees before everything goes still and silent and dark.
Other than a startled gasp from Julianne, none of us watching make a sound. It’s clear that we’ve just seen something terrible happen to Susie Hutchinson. I don’t know what the others are thinking right now, but I assume it’s the same thing I am.
Either someone in this parlor is responsible—or we are not alone on this island.